Since 1998, a body of work has been developing relating to the possibility of overlaps between lean manufacturing and organisations’ efforts to become more sustainable (in terms of environmental, social and economic performance – or some combination of these). We feel it is time for a review of these works, both to understand the “landscape” (e.g. trends in publishing on the subject and sub-areas that have or have not received attention) and to explore the lean and sustainability connection. This paper introduces the two subject areas whose intersection we plan to investigate, and explains how the systematic literature search was carried out. We then discuss the trends and the answers to our research questions; we find that there are many definitions for each of our subjects, and that most papers do not rely on a theoretical “lens”. Motivations for integration are many but most commonly cited are the better outcomes from lean, green, social, customer and other stakeholder’s perspectives. This field shows plenty of scope for further work, including a need for more empirical studies.